


Wood You Like to Join Me?

by Niki



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Adventures (Comics), Marvel Adventures: Avengers
Genre: First Kiss, Friendship, M/M, Steve is sneaky, Tony doesn't mind, violence towards furniture, woodworking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-18
Updated: 2012-02-18
Packaged: 2017-10-31 09:57:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niki/pseuds/Niki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Logan and Peter break a table (in completely innocent circumstances). Steve wants to fix it with Tony, and when has Tony ever been able to say no to him?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wood You Like to Join Me?

**Author's Note:**

> cap_ironman secret santa gift for grand_duc, my first actual fic in the fandom. Only first draft was betaed (because I suck) by lygtemanden.
> 
> The table in question is this one http://remodelista.com/products/artek-aalto-table-81a
> 
> Everything I know about woodworking I learnt online (thank you, eHow and co), so... umm, sorry if I got it all wrong.
> 
> Universe is Marvel Adventures but I borrowed the Mansion from 616.

To call it battle damage was probably going a little far (even though the "friendly" arm wrestling matches the Avengers spontaneously arranged during their off hours could get pretty heated) but the wooden table that had served as a perch for a changing floral arrangement in one of the first story rooms of the Mansion for as long as Tony could remember was definitely looking like a victim of something.

"I'm sorry, Tony," Spider-Man said, sheepishly. "I don't really know what happened."

"To me it looks like you were trying to hide behind the table from Wolverine's claws," replied Tony, surveying the damage, not really wanting to think about why Logan had been chasing Peter in the first place, or why the younger man had felt a turned over wood table would have offered much protection from the adamantium claws – which Logan wasn't supposed to use indoors in the first place.

"It's not bad, really! And it doesn't look like it's one of the expensive bits of..." Peter's voice died out as Jarvis made a sound like an aborted snort from where he was sweeping up the shattered remains of the flower vase.

Tony knew Jarvis had better control than that, so the sound must have been intentional. 'Cheaper' may have been true, but in a Mansion decked out in antique furniture, relative.

"Uh... no?" Peter looked very much his age as he met Jarvis's impassive stare.

"It's fine, we'll have it fixed," Tony reassured them. Or maybe he could get Jarvis another Alvar Aalto original from the twenties. That's what eBay was for.

"Couldn't we fix it?" Steve asked quietly, coming to stand close to Tony.

"We? As in...?" Tony asked, waving his forefinger between the two of them.

Steve nodded, looking surprisingly much like a puppy eager for a walk.

"Wood, not really my thing," Tony said. "Metal, yes. Circuits. And transistors! You wouldn't believe what I can do with transistors!" 

"I just thought it would be... a challenge. Something we could, maybe, learn together."

 

* * *

 

Tony couldn't really remember saying yes, but somehow he still found himself helping Steve carry the table down into his workshop. Steve's stubbornness in the matter was understandable, really, the man probably grew up wearing nothing but hand-me-downs from his dad and the kids in the neighbourhood, reusing and repurposing everything.

But Tony Stark was a man whose hand-me-downs were sold at charity auctions, and he could very easily afford a new table. Or if it was so important to Steve, have this one fixed by a professional. Stark International was bound to have some carpenters on the payroll, anyway.

"Shouldn't Peter be doing this? He's the one who broke it," he grumbled, half seriously.

"Do you really want to have him touch this again?" Steve asked.

Tony wedged the doors open, then cleared a space for their project in one corner.

"I don't really have many tools that would... I don't even know what we need!"

Steve was beaming. "So we need to do research."

"Great, I'll get right to it," Tony replied. Pepper would know about the carpenters. Heck, she could probably tell him what they needed in case Steve was really serious about all this. 

Tony was hoping he really wasn't, because in between his company and the Avengers business he had precious little time to tinker in his workshop anyway, and what time he had he preferred to work on Iron Man.

Then again, it was Steve. Steve, who was his best friend with whom he never got to spent enough time anyway. Maybe this wasn't such a bad idea after all.

 

* * *

 

After a busy month dealing with Arnim Zola, aliens and Karl, not to mention the idiots in his marketing department, Tony had almost forgotten the table waiting in his workshop.

He was idly scrolling through some schematics on his computer screen when Steve walked into the workshop carrying a thick book that may or may not have been titled "Carpentry for Dummies".

"Please tell me you at least bought that online, old man," Tony said but Steve only smiled in return.

"First we need to figure out what type of wood the table is, then..."

"Birch," Tony replied, opening a file that displayed the information. 

It was for Steve, anyway, and it was research, and that's what the internet was for, and... and it was for Steve, so of course he had taken the time to see what he could learn.

"That's good. I think we need to get some birch, then, because the gauges are so deep we might need wedges, and... I'm afraid we're going to have to purchase some tools, Tony," Steve said, apologetically, but at least he had learned to take Tony's ability to spend the money as a given. 

"Just make a... okay, we'll make a list and Pepper will make sure we get them."

For a moment Tony thought Steve was going to demand they visit the hardware shop themselves (which might be fun, sure, rich people had stores closed for them all the time, but Britney never shopped at the Home Depot, and Tony enjoyed being different) but in the end he just smiled and nodded. 

 

* * * 

 

Of course making the list meant they argued about every item on it. 

"But you can get a machine that does that!" 

"You can use sandpaper to do it yourself. I though the whole point was doing it ourselves," Steve said, stubbornly, and Tony sighed. 

He was doing this for Steve, he was doing this for Steve... "Fine. Sandpaper."

And what wouldn't he do to get Steve to give him that smile? The one that said "gosh, you're awesome," or at least that was how Tony chose to interpret it as.

 

* * *

 

Amidst more aliens and an encounter with Galactus, there was little time for Tony and Steve to even unwrap the tools that couriers had been delivering. Tony had also learnt that there were almost 60 different types of birch, and that they would get the best result in using the exact same as the original table, so he had had some wood imported from Europe.

He didn't tell Steve that.

After another gruelling week the Avengers were enjoying some much earned down time, and after a good night's sleep had gathered to eat breakfast in the kitchen, a habit which Jarvis had ages ago resigned himself to.

"So, you wanna go work on the wood?" Tony asked Steve after his third cup of coffee.

Jan spurted some coffee up her nose, judging from the sounds she was making. Tony ignored the mildly entertaining display in favour of watching Steve's face light up.

"Sure!"

 

* * * 

 

Tony had to concede doing the hands on work themselves had been a good idea when he was standing side by side with Steve, sandpapering the varnish off the table top. ("It says to use 120 grit first, then 220. So we're doing that." "Who knew there were so many different types of sandpaper?") It was almost soothing.

"There was this old man, living on our street," Steve said, quietly, after they had worked in silence for a bit. "He had a little shop right next to his room, and he fixed everything in the neighbourhood, even when the people couldn't really afford to pay him much. He was a carpenter, originally, and made beautiful furniture when ever he had the time."

Steve's hands stilled on the table. "He let me stay and watch him work when it was too cold for me to play outside, and even let me help occasionally. I wasn't any good at it, I preferred sketching him to actually working with him but... And during the War, in Europe, there wasn't much time to do anything elaborate, but there was always something to fix, buildings to re-purpose... I was always needed for other things, but sometimes... Sometimes I'd help the guys doing that and... It's soothing, sometimes, to just work with your hands and see the end result, you know."

Tony looked at his own hands, the many calluses born of years of working on metal, and nodded. "I know." He looked up and saw Steve looking at his hands, too, and smiling. 

"I suppose you do."

 

* * *

 

Tony was sandpapering the sides of the claw marks while Steve started working on the wedges. He eyed Tony's stash of wood with wonder. 

"Uh, Tony? We only need a few inches of the wood."

After keeping the origins of the material secret up to now, Tony couldn't tell him that even he felt stupid shipping a single stick of wood from Helsinki to New York. 

"I wasn't sure Peter hadn't damaged the legs when I got it," he explained, attempting to sound like he was absorbed in his work.

Steve looked around, obviously looking for something.

"Didn't we get a saw?"

"We didn't get a saw." He noticed where Steve was looking. "And you will not touch my metal working tools. I have a laser cutter we can use."

"You have a... of course you do. Won't it burn the wood?"

"It has separate settings for different materials. You could cut fabric with it. You can program any shape you want on the computer, and..."

"Maybe I'll just pop up upstairs and ask Logan."

 

* * * 

 

"If you're going to start whittling, I will keep calling you 'old man'," Tony said, looking up from the wood putty instructions he had been reading.

"Well, how do you propose I get the wedge to be the right shape for the hole?"

"You know, I have this laser cutter..."

 

* * * 

 

To his great surprise Tony found himself enjoying the work they were doing, even if Steve refused to let him reinforce the table legs with steel or coat it with any experimental chemical mixes. "Varnish, Tony. We're going to varnish it." He found himself making time in his busy schedule for them to work on their project – which, okay, maybe they were dragging out a bit because, really, even with the drying times for the glue and putty, second round of sandpapering, and having to take breaks to fight crime and run a company, they should have been done weeks ago.

But it was time with Steve. It was non-life-threatening, team-mate-free time with Steve. The first quiet confession wasn't the first tale he got out of the other man, either. Steve had never talked so much about his life before the War, or even during it, than he did during those hours they spent buried in Tony's workshop.

What else could Tony do but reciprocate? He talked about his childhood, of the rare times he and his father had shared a moment not unlike this, working side by side, though each on their own project, and when Tony's work really should have included crayons instead of blowtorches. One night, when they were sitting by the wall, just looking at the glue dry on their table, he talked about his mother.

He had called Steve his best friend for years, but maybe it really hadn't meant as much as it did now. And yes, he fell deeper in love every goddamn day, thank you very much.

 

* * * 

 

Even with three coats of varnish ("There was a study. At Gazi University. Three coats provide significantly more scratch resistance than one." "I don't think fifteen coats would be sufficient to protect it from Wolverine.") with days to dry in between they were bound to finish their project one day.

They stood looking at it in the corner of the workshop, Steve's arm resting casually on Tony's shoulders.

"Well, it may not be pretty, but it's ours." Tony couldn't help but break the solemn mood.

"What? Our baby is so pretty!" Steve said, elbowing him.

Tony didn't retaliate, and they just stood there, watching, for a long time.

"Peter and Logan haven't managed to break anything else, have they?" Steve asked, sounding almost wistful to Tony.

"Not unless they're getting better at hiding it from Jarvis."

"Right. Maybe... I mean, we have all these tools now... and I..."

"I know. I've enjoyed the work, too."

Pause.

"You know, I have fifteen cars right there we could work on."

"I don't really know that much about cars," Steve said, musingly. "Motorcycles, now..."

"I don't actually care what we do," Tony blurted out. "I just... I like doing this with you. A lot."

Steve turned to beam at him. "Me too."

"We don't really need an excuse to hang around together, do we?"

"But I really liked fixing the table, it wasn't just a..." Steve's voice died down, and he lowered his eyes.

"Not just a...?"

"An excuse to spend more time with you," Steve said, quietly.

Tony knew he could have been reading this wrong, Steve could be blushing just because he was caught out in a... a ploy? 

"We don't need an excuse, Steve," he said gently. "And, yes, I enjoyed it too, and not just as an excuse to spend more time with you."

Steve lifted his eyes to meet his, and Tony figured he could blame varnish fumes if this didn't go well before leaning closer to press a light kiss on Steve's lips.

He pulled back to see the blush back but had no time to decide whether that was shock in the blue eyes or something else before Steve pulled him close for another kiss, still perfectly chaste. 

It didn't stay chaste very long.

"Come on, I've got some wood you can work on," Tony said with a leer.

Steve groaned. "How long have you been waiting to use that one?"

Tony meant for his reply to be light but couldn't keep all the longing out of it: "Way too long."


End file.
